The Jericho Deception: A Novel

by Jeffrey Small

  Ethan was unsuccessful at suppressing the look of surprise that passed over his face. “I just arrived yesterday. Today I’m here to introduce myself and get to know the men.”

  “Where did you arrive?”

  He caught himself just before the word “Aswan” came from his mouth. Wolfe had prepped him on how to answer. “Here at the monastery. Now”—he sat on the edge of the bed and removed the stethoscope from his neck—“let’s have a look at you.”

  Mousa’s eyes narrowed. He’s not buying it, Ethan thought. He hoped the Jordanian wouldn’t notice how sweaty his palms were. I’m a doctor, not a spook. He tried changing the conversation.

  “What’s your specialty?”

  “Orthopedics.”

  “A couple of my friends from med school are too. While I’m stuck in my lab year-round, they’re taking vacations to the Caribbean.”

  Mousa grinned for the first time. “In Jordan, our work doesn’t pay quite the same as it does in the States, but we live comfortably too.”

  As he continued the physical exam, they shared stories about their favorite patients and more unusual colleagues. Mousa was the first doctor from a foreign country he’d talked shop with. Their practices weren’t that different, he realized. The more they spoke, the more he felt a kinship to the man who exuded a warmth that he suspected won over his patients.

  When he completed the exam, he pulled over the only chair in the room. “Well, physically you seem to be in good health—much better than was the case when you were brought here, I see from reading your chart.”

  “The priests have treated me well.”

  “How’re you feeling? From a mental standpoint, I mean.”

  Mousa glanced at the closed door. A look of uncertainty passed over his face, as if he were contemplating how much to trust him. He lowered his voice. “I appreciate what these men have done for me. They’ve been kind, if somewhat persistent in their religious missionary work. But I don’t fault them for that. I’ve seen far worse in my own country. I just want to get home to my family.”

  Missionary work. He wondered how to ask him about his experiences with the Logos.

  “I’m sure you’ll be heading home soon.” He didn’t know that to be the case, but he didn’t see how or why Wolfe could hold the man much longer, even if the Logos wasn’t as effective on him as it was on most of the others.

  “There’s something else, though.” Mousa glanced again around the room as if to confirm they were alone.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something strange is going on here. I think—”

  Before he could finish his thoughts, a knock rang out from the door and then it sprang open.

  “Good morning, Mousa. I’ve brought your tea.”

  Ethan stood and turned toward the oddly familiar voice behind him. The identity of the man dressed in the priest’s robes took his breath away.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE MONASTERY

  “Chris?” Ethan took a step backward at the sight of Christian Sligh, his graduate assistant.

  “You know Father Christopher?” Mousa asked.

  “We first met last year.” Chris’s wide grin never faltered. He carried a tray with a steaming cup of tea into the room. “I heard that the doctor just arrived, and I wanted to stop by and say hi.”

  Ethan stared at his student, unsure of which of the many questions racing through his head he should ask first. He sensed that Mousa was studying him.

  Chris set the tea on the table by the bed. With his back to Mousa, his student shot a look to him that told him to hold his questions. He’d never seen such authority on his face before. He shifted his weight from one foot to another. He was usually the one giving the instructions.

  “If you two are finished with your checkup, do you mind if I borrow Dr. Lightman for a minute?” Chris rested a hand on Ethan’s shoulder.

  Mousa glanced between the two of them. He held up the Bible in his lap. “I’ll just get back to my reading. I was engrossed in the story of Job.”

  “A favorite of mine, too,” Chris said. “Maybe we can chat about it later this afternoon.”

  “I’d enjoy that,” Mousa said with a smile that looked forced.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Ethan demanded as soon as the door closed behind them.

  “Not here,” Chris said under his breath. He hurried down the hall. Minutes later they sat across from one another at a long oak table, alone in the dining hall.

  “I want some answers.” Ethan brought his palm down on the hard surface. The slap echoed through the hall. “You work for Wolfe here at Jericho?”

  “Beginning the summer after my sophomore year at Notre Dame, I started an unpaid internship at the CIA. It was a very competitive process to get selected. After all the interviews, the polygraph tests, they still took six months to do a background check. They interviewed my roommates, friends, and professors, trying to dig up dirt like whether I smoked pot and who I’d slept with.” The student grinned, but Ethan didn’t return the smile. “I returned the next two summers, and then the CIA offered to pay for grad school. I could pursue a PhD in psychology in exchange for working my vacations and summers during school, plus five years after I graduate. How could I refuse?”

  Wolfe’s use of the Logos in the Monastery fell into place for Ethan. He rocked back in his seat as if he’d been struck in the chest. “So you’re the one who’s been feeding our research—the design of the Logos, the software protocols, everything—to Wolfe?” The loose ends made sense to him now.

  “Wolfe rescued the project!” Chris’s voice rose an octave. “Without his financial help, Houston would have shut us down before we could have run the tests on Sister Terri.”

  He sensed that his student was trying to rationalize his actions to himself as much as to him.

  “How much did Elijah know?” He wondered how far the conspiracy went.

  Chris shook his head emphatically. “Wolfe followed Elijah’s research from a distance for years. He pulled some strings to get me into Yale in order to place me with you guys. I was his eyes and ears. Wolfe didn’t approach him directly until we ran out of money a couple months ago.”

  “When our original grant expired, I thought they refused to continue funding us because of our lack of results with the Logos, but now—”

  “Wolfe made a few calls to that foundation. He knew Elijah wouldn’t accept his help unless he was desperate.”

  Then the memory of Chris’s actions immediately after Sister Terri’s test came to him—he’d been texting someone on his phone. Then he’d left New Haven.

  “Your father wasn’t really sick?”

  “I’m sorry I had to lie to you, but Wolfe required that I fly over the moment we had a successful test so I could supervise the Logos here.”

  He leaned across the table. “Do you know that Elijah was murdered?”

  “I”—Chris’s brow creased and his voice caught in his throat—“I can’t believe he’s gone. You and Elijah have been mentors to me ever since I arrived. You have to understand—although the CIA is paying my way through grad school, my passion is psychology. I’ve learned so much from you two.” He wiped his reddening eyes with the sleeve of his robe. “Wolfe told me he was killed in a robbery?”

  “That’s what the police are saying, but—” Ethan glanced around the room, confirming they were alone, and then explained how he’d found Elijah sitting in the Logos, the cryptic note that had led him to the library, the chase by Wolfe’s goon, and the mysterious transfer of the money into his bank account. Repeating the details for the first time aloud inside the multimillion-dollar secret prison whose success relied on his device raised the hairs on his arms. As much as he didn’t want to believe it, he knew the strange events were not random. He noticed that his student’s brow was scrunched in concern.

  Does Chris know more than he’s saying?

  As disturbing as it was to find that his student was working for the CIA, he couldn’t bel
ieve that he was involved in Elijah’s death. He’d known Chris for over three years, but then, he’d also been lying to him all along.

  “No way was Wolfe involved in Elijah’s death. They were friends years ago.”

  He studied the pained expression on his student’s face. “Why did you do it? I mean, beyond the funding for your education. You see what’s happening here—the religious indoctrination, the brainwashing—it goes against everything our research is designed to explore.”

  “I was thirteen when the towers came down.” Chris folded his arms across his chest and glanced up at the wood ceiling. “My Uncle Mark, my mom’s older brother, had an office in Two World Trade. Mom got a call from him about ninety seconds before the tower collapsed. We were watching it on TV together. She was too hysterical to speak, so she handed the phone to me. Uncle Mark and I had always been close; he used to take me go-kart racing when I was younger. He’d tell the track that I was twelve so they’d let me on.” His voice broke. “Mark was calm on the other line. He was standing at his office window. I yelled at him to run down the stairs. We’d already seen the first building collapse. ‘It’s too late for that, Chris,’ he said, ‘but I’m not afraid. God will take care of me.’ The phone line went dead. I watched the second tower come down with the receiver in my hand.”

  “I’m so sorry. I never knew that.” Ethan cleared his throat and paused for a moment. “But that doesn’t excuse your betrayal of our work. We want to unlock the mystery of religion, not use it as a tool for continued violence.”

  “But what Wolfe is trying to do here has the potential to bring peace to this region.”

  “Bring peace? By introducing other religious zealots he’s converted into the mix? That’s a recipe for greater conflict, not less.”

  “We might not see the effects for decades, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Until now we’ve been unable to penetrate these terrorist networks. The Logos is our best chance to secure our country from future attacks.”

  He evaluated Chris for a moment. His assistant had fully bought into Wolfe’s vision, a Machiavellian one in which peace was used as an excuse to justify immoral acts. But something about this place, something about Wolfe, disturbed him even more. He couldn’t put his finger on the exact source of this unease, but he wondered how far Wolfe wanted to take this program.

  “Why am I here, Chris? Wolfe opened up the whole facility to me.”

  “I told him that only you could fix the Logos. And he respects your work. He’s been following you for years.”

  He found it strangely satisfying, yet unnerving, that the CIA was interested in his research. No one at the university respected what he was doing.

  “What happens if I fix the Logos? Will Wolfe let me return to Yale to continue my research?”

  Chris shifted in his seat. “I don’t think you’re going to be working on the Logos in public any more. The technology is just too incendiary. But I’m sure that Wolfe could make it financially rewarding for you to continue your research with him.”

  “He’s never going to let me leave here, is he?”

  Chris refused to meet his eyes.

  CHAPTER 40

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Deputy Director Casey Richards sat on the corner of his desk and massaged the top of his bald head with his free hand. The other held a file folder marked “Eyes Only: Jericho.”

  “How many are ready to go?” he asked into the cordless headset hooked around his ear.

  After a brief delay as the signal bounced across the satellite and was processed by the descrambler, Allen Wolfe replied, “Ten, maybe a dozen if we stretch it.”

  “And the problems? We can’t afford to have any of these guys flip out on us.”

  Richards massaged harder. The hostage exchange he’d authorized had been brokered by friends within the Saudi government. Officially, it wasn’t even happening. The three journalists and two subcontractors, a combination of American and British nationals, had been held for fourteen months since they were kidnapped in Afghanistan the previous year. The intelligence had been embarrassingly sparse. They suspected the hostages were in Pakistan. On more than one occasion they’d scrambled Delta and SEAL teams to attempt a rescue. In each case the teams had arrived to find a couple of low-level Al Qaeda operatives but no hostages.

  He flipped through the folder on his lap, scanning the bios of the men Dr. Wolfe planned to release. They’d been caught in various terrorist sweeps over the past few years and then held in secret prisons throughout Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, where they’d been intensely interrogated. Each had gone through Project Jericho, and Wolfe assured him that these men were reliable converts. They would lead the CIA back to almost a dozen terrorist cells. Unlike the case with Youssef, drones wouldn’t bomb these cells. The Jericho men would act as agents, feeding intel to their priest handlers, with whom they would meet every few months.

  Richards planned to return the men the following week, with the simultaneous release of the Western hostages. The hostages would be met with worldwide media attention, and the White House would bask in the accolades. The release of the men from the Monastery, however, would happen below the radar screen of the press.

  “Don’t worry,” Wolfe replied. “We’re close to having the problem isolated and corrected. I’ve got the man who developed the Logos working on it now.”

  “I can’t stress to you the critical nature of this project’s success.”

  “I understand better than anyone.”

  He sensed a tone of annoyance in Wolfe’s voice. “As much of an investment as I’ve made in Jericho, I will shut it down in a moment if its existence comes close to leaking out.”

  “In more exciting news, next month I’ll be sending you a proposal for Phase II of Jericho. I have an idea that will make our terrorist infiltration plans look infantile.”

  He just ignored my threat, Richards thought. He shook his head.

  The problem with many of the academic types he’d worked with over the years was that they lacked the vision of where their work could lead—the impact it could have on the country. That wasn’t the case with Wolfe. He was, to put it mildly, ambitious. Ambition could change the world, but it could also destroy it. Jericho had the potential to do both.

  “I need Jericho working flawlessly before we even begin to discuss any kind of Phase II.”

  Silence greeted his last instruction. Sometimes he wondered whether Wolfe understood that he was working for him and not the other way around.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE MONASTERY

  Ethan sat on the floor, hunched over a laptop, shivering. The twelve-by-fifteen-foot server room on the ground floor was chilled to a meat-locker fifty-five degrees to keep the floor-to-ceiling racks of computer equipment from overheating. He guessed that most of the black boxes were either surveillance, communications, or computer servers. One piece of equipment—front and center on the bottom rack—he knew intimately: the control system for the Logos in the bishop’s cathedra on the monastery level underneath him. A thick gray cable ran from the serial port on the back of the box and down the side of the rack, where it was neatly clipped together with other cables from the components above it. The cables disappeared into a hole in the white tile floor.

  Two hours earlier, Chris had given him the laptop and left him in the room. His vision blurred from focusing on the lines of code that scrolled across the screen while a window in the corner displayed the binary code the computer translated the programming language into. He still couldn’t figure out what had driven the two subjects to have psychotic breaks. If only one man had experienced a negative reaction, he might have dismissed it as an anomaly, but two? And why them? He was missing something, something right in front of him. But what?

  Elijah and Rachel were right, he admitted. His confidence in his own work and zealousness to see it tested on humans had caused him to dismiss the potential problem with Anakin, the monkey wh
o became disturbed after the test. The mental image of Elijah with his disheveled hair and warm grin brought an emptiness to his chest, but then the thought of Rachel and the spark in her eyes brought a different feeling to his stomach, one he found more difficult to ignore. She was the one person at Yale he’d felt comfortable confiding in when his life fell apart. He closed his eyes for a moment and recalled the touch of her hand, the way she smelled when they were close, the way she seemed to understand his struggles. He wondered if she’d tried to call him. Would she report him as a missing person to the police? No one in New Haven knew where he was. Then a disturbing thought crowded out the memory of the attractive and insightful grad student: she had been speaking to Houston about him behind his back. He shook his head.

  As he clicked on the next page of code, another dilemma floated in his mind: what would he do if he discovered the flaw in his programming? If the US government was going to use his technology whether or not he approved, did he have an obligation to make sure they wouldn’t create schizophrenic subjects in ten percent of the cases? Was it his responsibility to police how his invention was used? That’s exactly your responsibility, said a voice in the back of his head that sounded a lot like Elijah.

  He disconnected the USB cable from the Logos controller, closed the laptop, and stood. He wanted to examine the men again. Maybe he needed to get back to basics. He would start with routine physicals and then draw blood, followed by EEGs. Maybe the two men had a history of mental instability that their files didn’t reveal. But then, all the men had been subjected to psychological extremes. Were any of them mentally stable?

  As he turned to the door, a familiar sight caught his eye. Amid the racks of computer equipment, three boxes tucked away on the far right were instantly familiar. He hurried to the rack and ducked his head around the metal shelves to get a better look.

  Three more Logos controllers?